French Provincial Cooking (72 page)

Charles Gay, whose sumptuously produced book
Vieux Pots
,
Saulces
et Rosts
Mémorables,
contains many Angevin recipes, says that it is only after making it fifteen times that the great chefs allow that you can produce a really perfect
beurre blanc.
But Curnonsky was more encouraging, for he considered it as essentially a dish, not of chefs, but of that
cuisine de femme
which he always praised so highly. Charles Gay, incidentally, adds a little thick cream to his
sauce au beurre blanc
, which is delicious but considered by purists to be a grave heresy.

The wine to go with this dish is a Muscadet from the Côteaux de la Loire or from the Sèvre-et-Maine district, situated respectively on the left and right banks of the river below Nantes. These attractive dry wines, which go so admirably with fish and shellfish dishes, and with hors-d’œuvre of all kinds, are made from a Burgundian vine, the
Melon
, transplanted to the Nantes district. They acquire their special qualities from the pebbly soil of the region. A good Muscadet has quite a strong bouquet, and as the catalogues say, ‘a delicate fragrance.’

‘This was the traditional dish served at Martigues for the
gros souper
on Christmas Eve. This excellent recipe is worth recording—and cooking.

‘Cover the bottom of a gratin dish with finely sliced leeks, so that they make a thick bed. Strew with chopped parsley and garlic. Add a good handful of black olives (stoned) and moisten with a good glass of dry white wine. On this bed lay a large skinned eel. Cover with breadcrumbs and cook in the oven for about 1
hours, the precise time depending on the size of the eel.’

ESCUDIER:
La Véritable Cuisine Provençale et Niçoise

Fresh-water crayfish rarely come our way in England; they do exist in our rivers but nobody bothers to catch them. In France, a number of restaurateurs who specialise in crayfish dishes keep a tank or
vivier
for these little creatures, whose flavour is so remarkably much finer than that of the large sea-crayfish and the lobster; they were evidently well-known to our ancestors, for many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English cookery books give recipes for them. La Chapelle (1773) has one for pigeons or chickens with a
coulis
of crayfish, which must have been very similar to the dish still made by accomplished French chefs.

The basic way of cooking and serving crayfish is
à la nage,
in other words simply simmered in a
court-bouillon
. One way of making this is as follows: slice a carrot in a dozen very thin rounds; cut 4 small onions and 2 shallots also in fine slices; shred an ounce of the white part of a celery heart and put all these ingredients into a saucepan with
pint of white wine half that quantity of water, 3 tablespoons of cognac, some parsley stalks, a scrap of dried thyme and bayleaf,
oz. of salt. Simmer this mixture until the carrot and the onion are quite tender.

The crayfish, which are always cooked live, must also have the intestinal gut removed, particularly at the spawning period, for it is liable to make the crayfish bitter. The end of this little black gut is at the opening under the central flange of the tail; it is pulled out with the aid of a little knife, gently, so as not to break the fish.

The crayfish, 2 or 3 per person, are put into the hot
court-bouillon
and boiled steadily for about 12 minutes. To serve them hot, remove them to a bowl or deep serving dish; reduce the
court-bouillon
to half its original quantity; add a dash of cayenne pepper and somewhat under 1 oz. of butter; pour this mixture, vegetables and all, over the crayfish and strew with a little cut parsley. To serve them cold, the procedure is the same, but leave out the final addition of butter. Pour the reduced
court-bouillon
over the crayfish and leave them to cool.

Unless carp is exceedingly fresh it is scarcely worth cooking.

Here is a recipe from
La Cuisine Messine,
a collection of recipes from Lorraine with special emphasis on the old dishes of the Metz district, written by Auricoste de Lazarque in the nineteen-hundreds. This, he says, is the genuine formula for the
carpe à /a juive
as cooked in Lorraine.

‘In a deep pan, or if you are going to cook the fish whole, in a fish kettle, heat nearly
pint of olive oil. When it is hot, throw in a quantity of small onions. As soon as they have turned golden stir in a little flour and a little soft white sugar; stir and do not let the flour and sugar brown. Add as much water as you will need to allow the fish to swim in it, a spoonful of wine vinegar, a little more sugar, some Malaga raisins and
lb. of skinned and sliced almonds. Bring to the boil, and add a pinch of salt. Put in your fish, either whole or cut into steaks.

‘When the fish is tender, remove it to a fairly deep serving dish. Over it pour the cooking liquid and all its contents, arranging the almonds and the raisins round the fish.

‘To be served cold in the sauce, which turns to a jelly.’

A 2 lb. fish needs only half the quantities given above and takes about 30 minutes to cook. But I think myself that the dish is an acquired taste.

Never having had the opportunity to cook or to eat the famous Burgundian stew of fresh-water fish called
pochouse,
I cannot judge of its merits. Some speak of it with reverence and affection, others with fear and horror. Here is a recipe contributed by Henri Racouchot, former proprietor of the Trois Faisans (this famous restaurant is now incorporated with the Pré aux Clercs) at Dijon, to a collection of Burgundian recipes called Les
Meilleures Recettes de ma Pauvre Mère,
by Pierre Huguenin, published in 1936.

 

‘Brown in butter, without letting them fry, 150 grammes (about 5 oz.) of fat bacon cut into slivers and previously blanched; add 18 little onions already three-quarters cooked in salted water to which a little flour has been added. On top place your sliced fish (tench, eel, perch, pike and carp); 6 crushed cloves of garlic, salt, pepper and sufficient very dry white wine to cover the whole mixture. When it boils, add a Bordeaux glass of Burgundian
fine
, set light to it and then cook for 18 to 20 minutes, then add, little by little, 2
oz. of
beurre manié,
shaking your pan so that the butter mixture amalgamates with the sauce and binds it; but take care, for the sauce must not become too thick. Finally, add another lump of butter, and serve with croûtons of bread fried in butter, and rubbed with garlic.

‘Some people finish their
pochouse
with a binding of egg yolks and cream, but I do not see the necessity for this and it is contrary to the precepts of the original recipes.’

Alfred Contour in
Le Cuisinier Bourguignon
gives a very similar recipe but calls it
pauchouse
and omits the flaming with brandy; Charles Blandin in
Cuisine et Chasses de Bourgogne et d’Ailleurs
spells it
pochouze,
and says that the sauce, highly flavoured with garlic, should be sieved and then poured over the fish and the croûtons already in the serving dish.

A
meurette
of fresh-water fish is again very similar, but red wine instead of white is used, as in the
matelotes
of the Rhône and of the Seine.

At Tours I have eaten a
matelote d’anguilles,
which consisted of eels stewed in red wine, with
pruneaux de Tours
, the sauce thick and rich and very dark. It was a dish which had a kind of ancient grandeur and allure but I would not want to eat it often. The same might be said of the Provençal
catigau d’anguilles
, a saffron-coloured stew of eels served with very fiery
sauce rouille,
which is a speciality of a charming restaurant at the Pont de Gau in the Camargue.